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Saturday, June 05, 2004
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McMaster's Face Red
They thought things couldn't get any worse at Canada's McMaster University this graduation season: Mix-up has wrong man honoured Doctorate was to go to namesake TORONTO STAR, HAMILTON, June 4 — An apparent goof-up at McMasterUniversity has led to a prestigious honorary doctorate being given to the wrong Hugh Fraser at this week's convocation ceremonies, says the man who claims to be the intended honouree. Hugh Fraser, the former Hamilton Spectator music critic and Hamilton Gallery of Distinction inductee who lives in Millgrove, Ont., says he was supposed to get the doctorate of letters. But somehow it ended up being given to a trombone player named Hugh Fraser from Victoria. Fraser says McMaster University president Peter George called to say he should have got the degree but there was a mix-up. Instead, George offered to bestow the doctorate next year, an offer Fraser accepted. Fraser was reluctant to discuss the ivory tower boo-boo, mainly because he didn't want to embarrass his namesake from British Columbia, who received the degree Wednesday along with music superstar Daniel Lanois. This was bad enough, but at a later undergraduate college convocation at the same institution, the same nominations committee bestowed a posthumous honorary degree on Louis-Ferdinand Celine (author of the novel Journey to the End of the Night), but sent the notification letter not to his heirs but to the French Canadian singer, Celine Dion. As Ms. Dion smiled radiantly at the podium, the head of the awards committee got up and gave a speech that honored her "uncompromising cloacal post-war anomie." He then read the following excerpt from her work: It was in that underground vault that they answered the call of nature. I caught on right away. The hall where the business was done was likewise of marble. A kind of swimming pool, but drained of all its water, a fetid swimming pool, filled only with filtered, moribund light, which fell on the forms of unbuttoned men surrounded by their smells, red in the face from the effect of expelling their stinking feces with barbarous noises in front of everybody. Men among men, all free and easy, they laughed and joked and cheered one another on, it made me think of a football game. The first thing you did when you got there was to take off your jacket, as if in preparation for strenuous exercise. This was a rite and shirtsleeves were the uniform. In that state of undress, belching and worse, gesticulating like lunatics, they settled down in the fecal grotto. The new arrivals were assailed with a thousand revolting jokes while descending the stairs from the street, but they all seemed delighted. The morose aloofness of the men on the street above was equated only by the air of liberation and rejoicing that came over them at the prospect of emptying their bowels in tumultuous company. The splotched and spotted doors to the cabins hung loose, wrenched from their hinges. Some customers went from one cell to another for a little chat, those waiting for an empty seat smoked heavy cigars and slapped the backs of the obstinately toiling occupants, who sat there straining with their heads between their hands. Some groaned like wounded men or women in labor. The constipated were threatened with ingenious tortures. When a gush of water announced a vacancy, the clamor around the free compartment redoubled, and as often as not a coin would be tossed for its possession. No sooner read, newspapers, though as thick as pillows, were dismembered by the horde of rectal toilers. The smoke made it hard to distinguish faces, and the smells deterred me from going too close. The consummate Vegas professional, Ms. Dion never lost her smile. |